OUR APPROACH

Design is serious - it transforms lives, but it is also fun!  We try to extend that joy throughout the process.  While we always bring a strong vision and fresh perspective, we focus on solutions that fit you.  We love to learn from our clients, and use design to help our clients learn.  We design across the spectrum of use, scale, and circumstances, with experience in nearly every building type and scale.  Each project benefits from this range of experience.  Some projects call for full bespoke design services with virtual reality and integrated interior, landscape, graphic, and engineering designs, while sometimes we stay behind the scenes, acting as a coach to support you through your own process, applying our considerable technical expertise to targeted portions of the project.

VISION

We see a world where humanity and nature are integrated, where people come together to improve themselves and their context.  One where your creative energy & understanding of life is elevated by the beauty found in an organic expression that makes one's place, time, culture, and purpose tangible.  We picture a more beautiful world with improves relations among humans.  Where everything is in balance and has integrity.

VALUES

• DESIGN MAKES A DIFFERENCE.  Innovation, elegance, expression
  

• STRENGTHEN COMMUNITY.  Foster positive relationships as we work and through our work
• DO GREAT WORK.  Make an impact
• ACE.  Be accurate and complete/thorough.  Then be efficient
• MATERIALITY.  Preference for materials over patterns.  Integrity of material selection, application, and detailing.  Default to use of natural materials. 
• UNDERSTANDING.  Redefine the program as a psycho-social objective, identify the pith of the situation, layer on the values & needs & context & constraints.
• INTERPRETIVE EXPRESSION.  Without stylistic predefinition, artistically/innovatively let the traits of the project be evident (it's time, place, values, budget, purpose)
• SIMPLICITY.  Default to subdued, restrained, and elegant
• WARMTH & DETAIL.  Not austerity
• PRAGMATISM.  Make it work, be efficient for function operation and construction, make it buildable and affordable, make it last, save energy, save materials.  But make it better than the standard solution.  Make it worth making so it is beloved and maintained
• Honesty, helpfulness, cheerfulness risk-taking, urgency, responsiveness
• Essentialness:  Architect as a partner not a provider.  We make things happen, look beyond the problem to redefine or clarify the objective.
• Know before you go  ​

240.372.0185
scott@knu.design​

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